Praise, Worship & Communion

Last week, I was in town for a few days and got to go to one of our mid-week services. We had about 120 students pack into a room to sing praise, take Communion and hear a student's testimony and devotion. I loved the chance to reconnect with some of the students I haven't seen a lot of this semester and to get to worship together.

I was so excited to hear one of our students, a long-time friend now, share about his struggles with trusting God through years of self-hatred and many other lies he's battled. It was thrilling to see him share some of his hardest struggles with the church and to hear him share about the truth that God has been speaking to him about his identity through close friends and staff in the church.

These student testimonies are one of the highlights of my month. To see someone boldly share how God has met them and what they have been learning provides a unique insight for the rest of our church. They aren't teachings or lessons, but stories that others can relate to and take hope from. For me, it reminds me that God is at work here and that what we're doing in our little church matters.

Please be praying for my friend who shared and for others that they may find hope from his story.

Prayer Night

Once a month, we have a service in which we celebrate one of the biblically-based core values of The Rock. We call this service Axis, as these are central to who we are. This semester, we are celebrating Stewardship. In a different approach, we decided to view prayer through this lens, that one of our basic function as believers is to be in fellowship with God. It was with this in mind that we decided to spend an hour in prayer.

As the producer for Axis, I got the chance to organize the night. I contacted six different students to help facilitate prayer stations that groups rotated through for about 8 minutes each, categorized in  Upward prayers to God, Outward prayers concerning other people and Inward prayers on personal reflection.

Upward
Praise - celebrating Jesus by hearing a psalm and writing a letter praising Jesus.
Giving Thanks - writing down things they were thankful for and lifting those up together.

Outward
Mizzou, partner ministries - praying together for the the evangelistic work with pictures for visual aid.
The Church - writing on note cards reminders to pray for throughout the week and praying for The Rock and its leaders

Inward
Personal Growth - personal written response in praying through the fruits of the Spirit
Struggles and Challenges - praying in small groups, lifting personal prayer requests to the Lord

Watching the church pray for an hour was so cool to see. For many, that was probably the longest they'd ever prayed. For some it broke the mold on what prayer looks like. For the leaders, well we were just so proud of the participation and facilitation of students.

Thought I'd share! Thank you for your own prayers.

"This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."

1 John 4:10

Yesterday, we kicked off a new series at The Rock entitled, Beyond Measure. Many people have a distorted view of God's love. We tend to have a very us-focused view of God's love, like he is some genie in a bottle waiting to make us as happy as possible - and when he doesn't, we are disappointed. Or, we can't imagine a God that is personal and instead picture him to be an angry God, out for vengeance and punishment, waiting for us to mess up so that he can inflict his wrath on us.

1 John shows us what the true nature of God's love is and that is what we are hoping to share with our students over the next four weeks. Please be praying that God will reveal his true love to us in this series.

Worship Service

I'll be kicking out a prayer letter next week, but in the meantime, here are a few songs we played at our last service. This is the one service this semester I'm actually playing bass at so I'm excited that one of our students filmed them!

"Jesus Paid It All"

Kristian Stanfill

"Beautiful Things"

Gungor

Honest to God

We just wrapped up a sermon series entitled Frames. Essentially it was a series to show the church how the Psalms frame how we relate to God. During the second talk of the series, I was asked to share one of my own psalms, an honest cry from my junior year of college.

Below is a link to audio streams of our sermons. I began the Feb 26th talk, "Honest to God" with my journal entry. It comes right off the bat if you'd like to hear it. I'd also encourage you to hear the sermon and any others that strike your interest.

I'd love for you to hear how we present the gospel through our main worship services here at The Rock. And, if you're ever in Columbia, please look me up as I'd love to invite you to one!

http://www.columbiarock.com/wordpress/rock-talks

Enjoy,
Chris

Sermon Series: Idols

One of my roles at The Rock is serving on the Programming Team, the group who puts together the creative elements of our Saturday services in order to most beautifully portray the Gospel. We began this semester with a series on Idols. For four weeks, we are exploring different aspirations we have that easily threaten our dependency on Christ and our pursuit of Him.

Week One: Identifying Our Hidden Loves
We have deceived ourselves if we think that there are no idols in our lives. We define these as anything that removes Christ from the throne and places itself on it instead. Even the morally neutral become idols and in this talk, we unpack what that looks like.

Week Two: Love is Not All You Need
College students are no exception to the lie that says "If you just find true love, you'll be happy." Love in itself of course is not a bad thing but it is perverted as soon as we let it take the place that God intends for himself in our lives.

Week Three: The Seduction of Success
John calls it the performance trap. Constantly running the hamster wheel, climbing the ladder, chasing the American Dream - call it what you will, we often worship at the alter of personal gain at the expense of our souls.

Week Four: Money Changes Everything
Especially in the midst of a recession, money can so easily become a dominating thought and pursuit in our lives. During this week, we will unpack how striving for financial success can lead us away from God.

The idea during this series is not to say don't pursue these things but instead to help us remember that God is not one to take the back seat very kindly. When we let love, success, money, whatever subtly grasp our full attention, we will pay the price. Instead, it is the Gospel that saves and we hope to communicate that beautifully.

Behind the Scenes

The past three weeks, we have been doing a series at The Rock called "Behind the Scenes". Pastor Ed Courtney has lead the series which has gone through the core doctrines of Justification, Sanctification and Glorification. Deacon Garrett Naufel will finish our series while speaking on Adoption this Saturday.

Each week we've had our own little "Behind the Scenes" video, highlighting a certain aspect of The Rock. Thought I would share a couple with you.

Note: These are not to be taken seriously!

Messy Conversations with God

Our latest series at The Rock began a couple of weeks ago. "Messy Conversations" is a five-parter that takes a look at the lives of a different Old Testament figure and their difficult conversations they had with God before they could cooperate with him. Particularly, we look at a question that God asks each of them that would change their lives.

Week One

Sarah: "Why are you laughing?"

Brandon Hoops opened the series by taking a look at Abraham's wife, Sarah, and her response when God's messenger told the old couple that God was following through with his promise to give them a child. Sarah is busted when she laughs aloud at the ridiculous notion that she could become pregnant. Her encounter with God would change her perspective on his faithfulness forever.

Week Two

Jacob: "What is your name?"

Pastor Ed Courtney told the story of one of the great fathers of our faith - and how much he lived up to his name, which meant "deceiver". Ed walked us through this tricksters constant attempts at deceiving his way to get what God had already promised to him at his birth. Finally, after wrestling with God all night, Jacob is asked "What is your name?", causing him to face his true identity before God would give him a new one, before he would become Israel.

Week Three

Moses: "What is in your hand?"

We've all heard the burning bush experience that Moses had while living in Midian as a shepherd. Perhaps the most famous character in the Bible (next to Jesus of course), Brandon Hoops shared with us what he calls the worst job interview ever. Moses had fled from Egypt after murdering a man and being called out on it from a fellow Hebrew. As he is doing his best to convince God that he is not worthy to lead his people to the Promised Land, Moses is finally asked what is in his hand. He is holding his shepherd's staff - his identity and security - and God is telling him essentially to throw it on the ground for something greater: his true purpose.

In our series, we are connecting what could be "Heard it a million times" Sunday School stories to a relevance seeking crowd of college students. We are showing students that yes, even the founders of our faith wrestled with earning their own path to success, with wondering who they really were and what their purpose was. Their encounters with God were not smooth like butter, but were real and raw as these stubborn men and women had to have their own hearts changed before they could truly cooperate with God. Just like us.

If you're interested, you can find messages from The Rock at http://www.columbiarock.com/wordpress/rock-talks.